In this blog post, I’ll briefly touch on the key arguments regarding why Don Juan became a myth independent of his original creators and whether he is, in fact, a quintessentially Spanish figure.

Don Juan as a Myth

Today, Don Juan is unquestionably accepted as a myth. So, in what sense can he be called a myth? Typically, the myths we refer to often have origins or backgrounds that predate recorded history; from this perspective, Don Juan differs from myths in the traditional sense. Furthermore, as Lévi-Strauss noted, there is a view that myths “have no author”; thus, one could argue that the label “typical myth” does not fit Don Juan, who has been portrayed by a multitude of authors, including Tirso de Molina.
However, Don Juan—both as a character and as a myth—quickly became independent of his creators and the original works. While Tirso de Molina and ‘The Seducer of Seville’ faded into obscurity over time, Don Juan moved from work to work—like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly—without belonging to any specific owner, or as if he belonged to everyone. It is precisely this transplantability and anonymity, intertwined with the collective unconscious, that transforms Don Juan into a mythical figure.
To borrow Jean Roussel’s words, Don Juan has survived by adapting to different eras and environments while striving not to lose his identity. He has become a figure that, while serving as a common asset of all humanity, never runs dry; this immortality is another mechanism that turns him into a myth.
Maestu, one of the critics who has discussed this mythical quality, believes that Don Juan’s mythical instinct stems from his ability to evoke a popular response rather than a literary one. In other words, Don Juan became a myth because he exists in the minds of the public and is not confined to a single text. He interprets Don Juan not as a creation of Tirso, Molière, Soriya, or Byron, but rather as a figure born of the public’s desires.
From Maestu’s perspective, Don Juan is a symbol representing the triumph of sensuality. Sensuality is no longer merely an element of his character or a hobby to be enjoyed alongside his other interests. Sensuality has become the sole reason for his existence, and all his other activities become secondary. It is this pursuit of pure sensuality that makes him a symbolic figure. In this sense, Don Juan is an abstract concept and a mythical being; he is not a figure who actually exists or could exist in reality.
Salgot’s explanation also follows a similar line of thought to Maestru’s. He views the enduring appeal of the Don Juan theme as stemming from its exploration of themes related to human nature, and regards Don Juan as an allegorical fiction representing something that everyone seeks and feels but cannot clearly articulate. In other words, Don Juan’s mythical nature stems from his timeless persistence and his connection to human nature.
Through a Jungian psychological perspective, Salgot argues that “myths arise from a collective longing for that which cannot be defined in the real world.” This view aligns with Freud’s statement that “myths are the transformed residue of the selective fantasies of an entire nation and correspond to the popular dreams of the young.”
Mandel likened a Don Juan without women to a Prometheus without fire. The myth demands that Don Juan seduce women without love and, after seducing them, ruthlessly abandon them, plunging them into despair. Since the 19th century, many writers have transformed this archetypal image of Don Juan, portraying him as a character who falls in love, becomes listless, or even develops a hatred for women; however, according to Mandel, such transformed versions cannot be considered the mythical Don Juan.
As long as he is remembered, Don Juan will forever remain both the greatest lover and the worst lover.

Is Don Juan Spanish?

Until now, the question of Don Juan’s nationality has not been a major point of contention. Whether it is Tirso de Molina’s Don Juan, Molière’s Don Juan, or Byron’s Don Juan, it has essentially been sufficient for the story to be about a womanizer or the manipulation of women.
“Don” is a title of respect prefixed to a man’s name in Spain, typically used before the names of nobles, while “Juan” is a very common name corresponding to “John” in English and “Giovanni” in Italian. Because of this, there has been little disagreement regarding Don Juan’s Spanish origins, and arguments identifying him as a real person have often cited Spanish men as his models. Ultimately, the question “Is Don Juan Spanish?” was pushed to the margins of the discussion, and the world—including his name—Spanishized him.
So, can Don Juan truly be viewed as a “Spanish figure”? Ortega y Gasset, Maestu, and Said Armesto, among others, emphasize Don Juan as a quintessentially Spanish figure, describing him as “a symbol of Spain—restless, chivalrous, and wandering.” In contrast, Maranón concluded that while it is true Don Juan emerged in Spain, he is essentially far removed from the Spanish character.
Marranón viewed Spanish love, as a purely national form, as a monogamous love for a single woman within the context of the family, taking on a form so strict that it bordered on mysticism. “Honor” was one of the distinctive themes of Golden Age Spanish drama, and Spanish men of that era revered honor to the point of resorting to violence and even murder. Honor was what justified revenge and crime when necessary, and this theme is prominent in the works of playwrights such as Lope de Vega and Calderón del la Barca.
Marañón argues that literature dealing with this concept of honor is what is truly Spanish. In his view, the archetypal Spanish man is not Don Juan, but rather a figure willing to stake everything for the sake of honor. This man, who never backs down in the name of honor, stands in direct opposition to Don Juan, for whom neither jealousy nor an obsession with honor holds much significance.
Even in Seville, part of the Andalusian region, love is a slave to honor, and chivalrous, sublime love is regarded as the ideal. However, Maranón suggests that two elements within Andalusian culture may have had a certain influence on the formation of Don Juan. One is the remnant of polygamy linked to the influence of the Arabs, who occupied the Iberian Peninsula from 711 to 1492; the other is the passionate and often tragic style of love found in the Gypsy culture prevalent in Andalusia.
However, the interpretation that these two elements directly influenced the birth of Don Juan is likely based on a misunderstanding. While the harem tradition in the Arab world is a product of patriarchy and power, Don Juan shows no respect for authority and is fundamentally different in character from a sultan who systematically gathered women through power and wealth. Furthermore, the form of love found in Romani culture—as evident in flamenco—is deeply religious and serious, standing in stark contrast to Don Juan’s irreverent and frivolous desires.
Therefore, Don Juan is neither a typical Spanish man nor a typical man from Andalusia, the setting of the work. Maragón views him as a product of a decadent and corrupt society, having learned the art of loveless seduction in the metropolis of Madrid or in Italy.

Is he a womanizer or a trickster?

As we’ve seen, ‘The Trickster of Seville’ owes a great deal to existing legends, folktales, and historical material. However, the merit of this work lies in more than simply combining a frivolous protagonist with “The Invitation of the Statue.” The unique character of Don Juan is entirely a creation of ‘The Trickster of Seville’.
Today, Don Juan has become a myth thanks to his captivating character. As an infallible seducer and a figure who toys with women, he symbolizes an endlessly desiring masculinity. Because of this symbolism, Don Juan has transcended the status of a mere womanizer or temporary libertine to become a cultural icon, and this explains his enduring presence and influence.

Don Juan, the Deceiver

Up to this point, we have not referred to Don Juan as a “womanizer” but have intentionally used the somewhat unnatural title “deceiver.” The reason is that Don Juan is not merely a womanizer.
While both the womanizer and the seducer share the commonality of having complex relationships with the opposite sex, there is a fundamental difference. The former is someone who likes women, maintains ongoing relationships even after conquest, and is capable of dating multiple women simultaneously. Madariaga cited the fact that women instinctively like womanizers because they know how to respect women.
In contrast, Don Juan cannot be a womanizer. He desires a woman’s body but neither likes nor loves her. Nothing beyond the physical attracts him; rather, he revels in women’s despair and frustration. Therefore, even before he conquers a woman, he is already preparing to flee, fully aware that conquered women tend to try to bind him to them.
Hating confinement and always dreaming of freedom, he flees from such women—and from his own waning passion. As a result, the women he conquers find themselves in a position of being “toyed with.” Though they are seduced by his looks, background, and eloquence, he neither respects them nor has any intention of doing so.
The reason Don Juan becomes a seducer is that he attacks and conquers women only to discard them without hesitation, and because he enjoys both the process and the outcome. Perhaps he takes even greater pleasure in a successful farewell than in conquering a woman. A famous line from Don Juan perfectly captures this essence: “Seville loudly calls me a seducer, but what I enjoy most is seducing a woman and leaving her in a state of dishonor.” For Don Juan, sex is sweet, but seduction is a far more splendid act.

Don Juan the Rebel

Much criticism of Don Juan argues that his fundamental character trait is not sensuality but “rebellion.” Jandarm de Bevot viewed Don Juan as a spokesperson for “an independent morality that stands up against the philosophy of the self and the old discipline of obedience”; Denis de Rougemont compared him to Nietzsche, while Stefan Zweig likened Nietzsche to Don Juan.
Madariga emphasized Don Juan’s rebellious nature, asking, “What would Don Juan do if there were no walls to scale, no virginity to defile? What would he do if there were no religious, moral, or social laws to defy?” He further remarked, “Don Juan destroys all laws—whether divine or human—simply because they are laws.” Jean-Darm de Bevot believed that the reason figures like Don Juan did not appear in the ancient world was because that society treated the body with tolerance. In other words, tolerance toward the body did not constitute a rebellion against religious or social laws at that time, and therefore there was little need for the emergence of a figure like Don Juan.
So, did Don Juan seduce women in order to rebel against the existing social order? We do not deny that he was a rebellious figure. However, we need to clarify what is central and what is secondary—which is the substance and which is the shadow. If we were to fully accept the arguments of Jandarme de Bevotte or Madariaga, Don Juan’s sexual adventures—devoid of any conscious purpose to challenge the social system and its norms—might not have existed at all.
However, some have pointed out that many critics and scholars have intentionally overlooked Don Juan’s sexual impulses in an effort to elevate him into a more “charming” rebel. Mandel highlights this point and asks whether the desire to emphasize the image of the rebel has obscured Don Juan’s actual desires.
In the dialogue between Don Juan and La Motta in ‘The Seducer of Seville’, we learn that he did not merely seduce chaste virgins but also frequently engaged with prostitutes. The two know the past and present of the women on the streets of Seville inside and out. If Don Juan’s defining traits are “seduction” and “rebellion,” do prostitutes exist solely to serve his rebellion? Do prostitutes even have a reputation to tarnish? What exactly is he rebelling against in his relationships with women whom society has already accepted?
In response, Mandel emphasizes that Don Juan is a myth. Myths do not exist merely as esoteric concepts for a select few scholars; they are a means of expressing the interests of the general public and human instincts. If you ask people who Don Juan is, many would answer that he is a great lover—a man who finds women irresistible. Characteristics such as being a rebel or an atheist are merely secondary elements. Since myths are created for and about the masses, we must trust the judgment of the masses.
If a rebel were needed, why would a professional womanizer have been placed at the center of the myth? As a rebel, Don Juan may seem paltry and trivial compared to other figures. However, as a sensual figure, he is an extremely intense and distinct character.
Don Juan is, at his core, a simple character. He was as unadorned as Tirso’s protagonist, and one could say that Don Juan, as a myth and symbol, has also been simplified into an archetype. He was a Machiavellian who could not control his lust in the presence of women and would stop at nothing to achieve his goals. As a result of employing every means to conquer women, he ended up threatening the very structure and foundations of society, which incidentally earned him the glamorous nickname “rebel.”
Of course, in Soriya’s ‘Don Juan’, the motivation for his actions is different. He seduces and conquers women not out of pure desire for them, but because of his rivalry with Don Luis. Consequently, for Soriya’s Don Juan—Tenorio—rebellion against society and sensuality hold equal value. He declares that wherever he goes, he tramples on reason, mocks virtue, ridicules justice, and deceives women. However, the Don Juan who has become a myth is, above all, a seducer symbolized by sensuality.
By seducing a woman, Don Juan also mocks the honor of the man associated with her. By conquering a woman, he effectively defiles the honor of her fiancé or lover. According to Ruth Plaut Weinreb, this is a double victory—not only a victory over the woman but also a victory over the man.
Furthermore, through his false oaths, he causes chaos in Spanish society, where verbal contracts were held in high regard. In 17th-century Spain, a man’s word—staked on his honor—carried greater weight than a written document; this was likely due in large part to high illiteracy rates and the influence of a church culture that valued the spoken word. Therefore, the false language Don Juan used to seduce women was an event that shook the very foundations of society.
As a man of action, Don Juan constantly clashed with and defied social authority, but this did not stem from any lofty philosophy or ideal. Desire inevitably encounters obstacles—such as authority and the established order—in the process of being realized. Even his image as a rebel is merely a shadow cast by his true nature and actions. Ultimately, he is a prisoner of uncontrollable sensuality, a man who ignored and denied social authority rather than challenging it.

Don Juan the Victim

In ‘The Trickster of Seville’, the story reaches a resolution when Don Juan is eliminated by a statue. Aesthetically, what drove Tirso’s Don Juan to his death was the poetic justice demanded by the “comedia de capa y espada” (cloak-and-sword plays) that were popular at the time. In this genre, it was customary for illicit love affairs to conclude with the seducer’s death.
Theater of the Golden Age (Spanish Baroque) fundamentally did not tolerate immoral acts; it served as a tool to convey conservative ideologies, serve those in power, and contribute to the maintenance of the social order. Therefore, Don Juan’s death can be understood in connection with such aesthetic and social demands.
What raises questions regarding Don Juan’s death is that the statue did not grant him an opportunity to repent. If the statue were a representative of God, it should have offered the possibility of repentance in accordance with the Christian concept of salvation; however, the statue refused to do so and drove Don Juan to his death.
Furthermore, in the final scene, the statue burns alongside Don Juan and vanishes into the ground; this can be interpreted as the statue itself becoming a victim of the fires of hell. If so, who exactly is the statue? It seems more reasonable to view him not as a messenger of God, but as a spokesperson for society—a product of the illusions created by that society.
The statue’s revenge can be read as society’s own sublimated desire to maintain the social order. In other words, the interpretation is that Don Juan’s elimination is not merely divine retribution, but an expression of the collective desire to restore social order and honor.

The Sevillian Rake and the Question of Honor

According to 17th-century Spanish norms of honor—specifically the code known as the “Cloak and Sword”—a woman who had lost her virginity was to be sent to a convent rather than allowed to marry and start a family. By that standard, Isabella and Armintta, who had lost their virginity, were in a position where they should have gone to a convent instead of getting married.
However, after Catalino delivered the news of Don Juan’s death, even Batricio—who had always placed great importance on honor—began planning to marry Armintta without hesitation; the victims thus chose to find their own partners and marry, disregarding the strict honor codes of the time. Thus, ‘The Trickster of Seville’ culminates in an ending that transcends the common sense and norms of the era all too easily, solely through the death of Don Juan.
Ultimately, as nobles marry nobles and commoners marry commoners, the system of marriage within one’s own social class—which had been shaken by Don Juan—and the hierarchical order appear to be restored. In this regard, the work contributes to the maintenance of the social order, and the conclusion presents Don Juan not as a mere “blasphemer” but as a “seducer” who meets his death while safeguarding women’s chastity and honor.
However, Maurice Mollo believes there is a deeper intention behind this ending. His interpretation is that the ideology established at the Council of Trent shifted the authority over the institution of marriage from the free will of the individuals involved to the authority of the father; as a result, women were transferred from being their father’s property to their husband’s, and society was reorganized to remain male-centered. Therefore, the ending of ‘The Trickster of Seville’ can be read as manipulating a free marriage vow to produce negative consequences, thereby reinforcing the legitimacy of the new patriarchal system.
Mollo also views the Don Juan myth as linked to the origins of monogamy, interpreting it as a mythical device that reveals the tension between desire and the establishment of a stable Christian society. James Mandrell, borrowing terminology from Lévi-Strauss, explains this conflict as a process in which the contradiction is dialectically resolved through internal social struggle.

Don Juan’s Religious Identity and the Question of Salvation

From this perspective, Don Juan unwittingly becomes the embodiment of an atoning death for society and of sacred mediation. However, it is difficult to view the society depicted in the work as an ideal society governed by justice and morality. For example, the fact that a character with a bad reputation, such as the Marquis de La Motte, marries Doña Ana reveals that society is not inherently just. Therefore, Don Juan could also be interpreted as a scapegoat sacrificed for the sake of the institution of marriage, social class, monogamy, and patriarchal ideology.
In contrast, other works—such as those by Molière or Mozart (based on Da Ponte’s librettos)—differ from Tirso’s ending. Many of these works do not conclude with Don Juan’s punishment and death; rather, by omitting scenes of society recovering after his death, they present him as a rebel defying the system. Jules Brody views this Don Juan as a cursed yet contradictory human being, arguing that he demonstrates that only God can restrict his freedom.
In the legends and folktales preceding ‘The Libertine of Seville’, the protagonist often died or narrowly escaped death because he had blasphemed against the Church or the spiritual realm. Within this tradition, Tirso portrays Don Juan as a blasphemous and sacrilegious figure who faces judgment, yet he does not depict him as one who completely denies God. The line “There is plenty of time to repent,” which Don Juan repeats in response to Catalinon’s warning, shows that he does not entirely reject the Christian worldview.
On the surface, Tirso’s Don Juan remains within the bounds of faith; however, more specifically, he can be interpreted as a character inclined toward predestination—the notion that salvation and destiny are already predetermined—rather than the Catholic view of salvation. For this reason, his death is also interpreted as having political and religious intentions that reflected concerns about Protestantism, which had been viewed with suspicion in Spanish society since the Reformation.
In contrast, Soriya’s ‘Don Juan’ (from the Romantic era) is portrayed as a character who is saved and, as a result, undergoes a transformation of identity. Soriya’s protagonist finds salvation through his genuine love for Doña Inés and is persuaded to embrace goodness through that love. “Love,” a central tenet of Christianity, serves as the means of his salvation.
The Don Juans of Molière and Da Ponte present yet another aspect. Molière’s Don Juan is an atheist; he has completely discarded faith to eliminate the contradiction—as seen in Tirso’s portrayal—where a character professes faith but acts contrary to it. Consequently, Molière’s character has no intention of repenting and is not saved. Da Ponte’s Don Giovanni fails to attain salvation until the very end by rejecting the call to repentance just before his death. Thus, while the early Don Juans in Spanish literature are either Christians or characters prepared to become Christians, many of the later Don Juans undergo a transformation away from this.

Don Juan’s Sexuality and Masculinity: Symbol or Mask?

The claim that Don Juan is a great symbol of masculinity stems from the view, shared by scholars such as Maderia and Ortega, that he represents the ideal of masculinity and manhood. This assessment has been widely accepted because he possesses the ability and charm to seduce and conquer all women.
In contrast, Maranón argues that accepting Don Juan as the epitome of masculinity is merely a literary illusion. He views Don Juan’s pursuit of multiple women not as a result of his inability to settle on a single woman, but rather as a choice not to select a specific partner because he satisfies all women. Maranón states that a truly complete man should be able to distinguish his objects of love and tend to be monogamous or focus on a small number of women.
Don Juan treats women not as individuals but solely as sexual objects. Consequently, his romantic pursuits are adolescent and akin to animal instincts, far removed from the genuine passion that flourishes only in deep mystery and secrecy. He flaunts his conquests by boasting about them in public squares, even going so far as to exaggerate or fabricate his successes. This crass display is not mere boasting but also a tool by which scandal beckons new adventures.
Marañón views Don Juan’s masculinity as questionable even in terms of his appearance and physique. Unlike the traditional image of a seducer or the Casanova archetype, the Don Juans of literature are often short and far from the stereotypical macho look. His refined attire and exaggerated mannerisms, on the contrary, reveal an ambiguity in his masculine traits.
Furthermore, there are almost no known instances of Don Juan being deeply hurt or jealous when rejected by a woman. Once he has conquered a woman, he immediately sets off in search of his next conquest; once the object of his conquest is possessed, his rivals disappear. This attitude serves as the basis for the argument that Don Juan’s love differs from true masculine love.
Marañón ultimately concludes that Don Juan’s love is closer to a state of undifferentiated gender—that is, intersexuality—and views him as not a “perfect man” in the traditional sense. While Don Juan may be an idol and ideal for men, this does not mean he embodies the ideal man.